marriage?"

He did not wish to prevaricate, and he answered that it was at that
instant that the idea came to him, exact enough and strong enough to
give form to the ideas that had been floating in his brain for several
months.

"At least, have you considered it? Have you not yielded to an impulse of
love?"

"Would it be better to yield to a long, rational calculation? I marry
you because I love you, and also because I am certain that without you
I cannot be happy. Frankly, I acknowledge that I need you, your
tenderness, your love, your strength of character, your equal temper,
your invincible faith in hope, which, for me as I am organized, is worth
the largest dot."

"It is exactly because I have no dot to bring you. When you were at the
last extremity, desperate and crushed, I might ask to become the wife of
the poor village doctor that you were going to be; but to-day, in your
position, above all in the position that you will soon occupy, is poor
little Phillis worthy of you? You give me the greatest joy that I can
ever know, of which I have only dreamed in telling myself that it
would be folly to hope to have it realized. But just that gives me the
strength to beg you to reflect, and to consider whether you will ever
regret this moment of rapture that makes me so happy."

"I have reflected, and what you say proves better than anything that
I do not deceive myself. I want a wife who loves me, and you are that
wife."

"More than I can tell you at this moment, wild with happiness, but not
more than I shall prove to you in the continuance of our love."

"Besides, dearest, do not have any illusions on the splendors of this
position of which you speak; it is more than probable that they will
never be realized, for I am not a man of money, and will do nothing to
gain any. If it does not come by itself--"

"It will come."

"That is not the object for which I work. What I wish I have obtained
partly; if now I make money and obtain a rich practice, the jealousy of
my confreres will make me lose, or wait too long, for what my ambition
prefers to a fortune. For the moment this position will be modest; my
four thousand francs of salary, that which I gain at the central bureau
while waiting to have the title of hospital physician, and five hundred
francs a month more that my editor offers me for work and a review of
bacteriology, will give us nearly twelve thousand francs, and we must
content ourselves with that for